Translation ~ G45.1009
Professor Michel Beaujour
Spring 2007

This course has a dual purpose. The first in linguistic, the other literary. All the texts in English or in French selected for translation into the other language are excerpted from literary works of some distinction (as opposed to newspapers or technical prose), and they all are somewhat "difficult".

The linguistic benefit of the course derives from our effort to translate, into either language, longish texts that are manifestly better written than those we might be able to produce in our own language. Besides, the correction of the weekly translation brings up stylistic and other literary issues which are analyzed in detail during the following class session.

I estimate (in fact, I know from experience) that it takes no less than three hours of sustained work to do each translation.

Suggestions concerning which texts to translate are welcome. For practical and theoretical reasons, I intend to limit our selections to prose and to the "modern period" (19th and 20th centuries).

We are aware that students in such a course start with very different levels of competence. We will monitor and grade progress with these discrepancies in mind.